NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/legal/21823

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-30 | 8.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!crdgw1!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!afterlife!adm!smoke!matt
From: [e-mail] (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Pre-Sex Contract
Summary: Time is not on the side of the Studs'n'Sluts
Keywords: Guilty; Studs'n'Sluts
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 Dec 92 15:12:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.
Lines: 151

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(Kevin Darcy) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Matthew Rosenblatt)
>writes:

>>What underpins the current policy of paternity child support?  Why,
>>Status Law!  Status Law based on the same "Natural Law line of reasoning"
>>that Mr. Darcy characterizes above as "marvellously quaint."
>>[Matt Rosenblatt]

>Status Law is inoperative unless it facilitates a rational state interest.
>[Kevin Darcy]

What does "inoperative" mean?  That the authorities are not going to
make the father pay?  But they *do* make plenty of fathers pay!  So
"inoperative" means no more than, "some of us don't like it."

>There is no justification for a Status Law which deprives a man of his
>property for absolutely no other reason than "tradition".  [Kevin Darcy]

The articulated reason for the paternal support requirement is to
provide support for the father's children.  And that's what happens:
money to support the child comes from his father, not from some such
abstract entity as "society," meaning "innocent taxpayers who had
nothing to do with bringing the child into existence."

>>. . .  A man knows that if he engages in sexual intercourse,
>>there is a risk that he will conceive a child and that once that happens,
>>there will be nothing he can do to keep from forced fatherhood if his
>>girl-friend wants to bear that child.  For some men, this knowledge is
>>enough to deter them from expressing their sexuality in this way, and
>>that is all to the good, because man ought not to be having sex except
>>with a woman to whom he has made a commitment that he will support her
>>and any children they may bring into the world; that is, except with
>>a woman he has married.   [Matt Rosenblatt]

>It is folly to build any modern social policy on the unenlightened and
>naive hope that adults will repress their sexuality, Rosenblatt. In case
>you haven't noticed, a Sexual Revolution has been fought ere these last
>several decades, and your side -- the side of repression -- lost big time.
>[Kevin Darcy]

Last time I looked, laws tightening the paternal support requirement
were on the way in, not on the way out.  At both State and Federal
levels.  And this is happening not because of Puritan sentiment that
adults ought to repress their sexuality, but because eminently practical
men have noticed, in a time of rising taxes and rising deficits, just
how much of their tax money is going to support *other men's children*.

Do the Studs want simultaneously to protect both their wallets and the
expression of their sexuality, even at the expense of their children
or the taxpayers?  Too bad, Studs:  *We taxpayers* are tired of being
forced to subsidize *your fun*, so we're ready to hold more of you
responsible for the consequences of that fun, even at the expense
of your sexuality, which we don't see as valuable enough to justify
making us support your children.  And in a democratic society that
seeks "the greatest good for the greatest number," it is right for us
to get what we want because if one adds the number of innocent children
needing support to the number of clean-living non-Studs, the total far
exceeds the number of Love-em-and-leave-em Lancelots out there.  Moreover,
the price the Studs are being made to pay is a paltry one, viz., indulgence
in carefree, illicit sex.  (NB:  In a democracy, the majority decides
what's "paltry" and what's significant.)  What the Studs want is no
"fundamental right," but a mere luxury to be enjoyed *at other people's
expense*.  It's not right.  What the clean-living majority wants is
right, and the knowledge that we are right gives emboldens us in our
use of the child-support laws to get these little ones what they
deserve:  Right makes Might.

>You can't turn back the clock.  [Kevin Darcy]

Seems to me the Allies in 1945 effectively turned Germany's clock
back to before 1933.  The argument that "you can't turn back the
clock" assumes that society never makes a mistake, that it is
never worthwhile retracing our steps, finding out where we went
wrong, and taking another, better path.

>You can't regain lost innocence.  Pass all the laws you want,
>Rosenblatt, people will still screw each other's brains out, all day, all
>night.  [Kevin Darcy]

And when children are born as the result of all this round-the-clock
activity, the Law will bring all the resources of the modern State
to bear to see to it that the fathers of those children support them.
In fact, if these laws were so unenforceable that men did not have
to worry about them, the Studs would not be crying so loud for their
abolition.

It's not the men of the indigent Rabble who are squawking.  They
have no salaries for the Child Support Enforcement Agency to garnish;
they have no assets for the Sheriff to seize.  Rather, it is well-off
Studs of the People and the Elite who think they have better things to do
with their income and wealth than support the children they have fathered.
Well, these Studs had better think again, 'cause the Information
Technology State is coming to take what their children deserve.

>>Other men are not deterred and are willing to take the risk that they
>>will become fathers and be held to the responsibilities of fatherhood.
>>It ill befits a man who has chosen to take this risk to cavil when he
>>is later called to meet those responsibilities.   [Matt Rosenblatt]

>These "responsibilities", however, are artificially-imposed, and, IMO,
>unjustifiable.   [Kevin Darcy]

The whole criminal law is "artificially-imposed."  Specifically, the
law prohibiting the use by a man of RU-486 to abort his unborn progeny
is "artificially-imposed."  The fact that we impose responsibility for
a child's support on the two people who biologically created him is a
quite reasonable and justifiable way to get that child supported, and
the tighter the enforcement net becomes, and the harder it is for men
to escape it, the more children will be supported.

>It very much befits, nay behooves, any and all members of a
>democratic society to attempt to fix a social mechanism which
>starts causing more harm than good.  [Kevin Darcy]

Ah, but who decides whether a given social mechanism is "causing more
harm than good"?  Who decides whether it's the paternal support
requirement, rather than the prospect that

>people will still screw each other's brains out,

that is causing more harm than good?  In a "democratic society,"
it is the majority.  That is, Mr. Darcy's task is to convince the
majority that the harm done to Studs -- in terms of getting some of
them to repress the natural exuberance of their sexuality, and forcing
others of them to support their children -- outweighs the good done
to children and to the taxpayers, in terms of support for the children
at less expense to the taxpayers.

>You're an anachronism, Rosenblatt, to be swept
>aside by those who believe that a society can learn from the mistakes of its
>past, and progress and develop into something much better.  [Kevin Darcy]

If the paternal support requirement is anachronistic, where is the
democratic, majority support forming for its abolition?  In which
States have bills been introduced into the Legislature to this effect?
How many public statesmen are telling us that the paternal support
requirement is a "mistake"?  Is it the Democratic Party or the
Republican Party that is advocating absolving fathers of their duty
to support their children?  Was it outgoing President George Bush,
or Candidate Ross Perot, or incoming Presidents Bill and Hillary Clinton,
who advocated letting men "copulate and run"?  Maybe I wasn't listening
closely enough to the campaign and convention speeches.

                    -- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        ([e-mail])

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